GOP keeps distance from NRA (GOP sprinting towards irrelevancy)

Republican lawmakers have kept their distance from the National Rifle Association during the debate over gun laws in Congress, even as many have echoed the powerful lobby’s arguments against President Obama’s agenda.

While polls suggest more than half the country approves of the NRA, the aggressive approach by its outspoken vice president, Wayne LaPierre, has led to some criticism of the group — and claims by some Republicans that they could be hurt by association.

“The NRA has made it more difficult for members to vote with them based on their statements,” said former Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.), a centrist Republican who received an “F” rating from the group when he served in the House. “They look so stubborn, so out of touch with the mood of the country.”

Yet the NRA's approach has also been effective: Obama has struggled to win GOP support for legislation to expand background checks on gun purchases and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Republicans leading the charge against the president’s gun-control proposals are not touting their alliance with the NRA, and they have not endorsed LaPierre’s call for Congress to appropriate funds to put armed guards in schools across the country. But they have built a bulwark against efforts by gun control advocates to win far-reaching changes to gun laws, despite the national shock of the Newtown, Conn. elementary school killings that left 20 five- and six-year-olds dead.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) last week won majority support in the Senate for his non-binding budget amendment calling for any gun legislation to require a two-thirds majority for passage. He received the NRA’s endorsement in 2010, and along with Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) he is vowing to try to block gun legislation from even coming to the Senate floor.

“While they certainly wind up on the same side of the aisle a lot of the time, the senator comes at this from both a Constitutional and public safety perspective,” Lee spokesman Brian Phillips said. “It’s not like he’s been sitting down and reading NRA materials to determine what he believes. He knows what he believes.”

Phillips said he did not know whether Lee backed LaPierre’s proposal for federally funded guards in every school. “To the extent that they can drive attention to an issue, that’s helpful,” he said.

The NRA is a popular ally for Republicans and many Democrats during campaign season, when candidates in rural and conservative districts vie for the endorsement of the organization’s political arm. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) appeared with LaPierre at an event touting the opening of a new shooting range in Nevada during his re-election campaign in 2010. The gun group contributed about $650,000 to 261 House and Senate candidates in 2012, with 90 percent going to Republicans, according to an analysis by the Washington Post.

The organization has taken a public relations hit, however, in the months since the December massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. LaPierre drew criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for a defiant speech he delivered weeks after the shooting, during which he rejected calls for new gun restrictions, made his proposal for armed guards in schools and blamed the media and Hollywood for violence in American culture.

Polls taken since the shooting and after LaPierre’s public statement have shown a dip in the NRA’s public image, although a majority of respondents, 54 percent, still held a favorable opinion of the group in a late December Gallup survey.

Vice President Biden has argued that the politics of gun control have changed in the nearly two decades since Congress passed an assault weapons ban, which was blamed in part for the Democrats’ loss of their majorities in the House and Senate in 1994. Yet with the passage of any new gun restrictions in doubt, Biden’s analysis could prove erroneous.

“If it’s changed, it’s changed slightly,” said Shays, who is now at the University of New Haven after losing a bid for the Republican nomination for Senate in Connecticut last year.

While Democrats will eye the fallout in a general election matchup, Republicans now worry about a primary challenge if they support gun-control measures, Shays said. “In the end, I think members will do real calculation on whether this vote will cost them the election,” he said.

Although Republicans are not lining up to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with LaPierre, the NRA’s vaunted lobbying influence, now being tested by a group financed by billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I), has always been strongest behind the scenes.

The chief argument from Republicans opposed to a universal background check system — that it would lead to a national gun registry — is the same one the NRA has made in its public statements and advertisements.

Rep. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) received an endorsement and $9,900 in total donations from the NRA in 2012, tied for the most the group gave to any House Republican in that election. In a statement to The Hill, Renacci made no mention of the NRA. He said he was “heartbroken” by the tragedy at Sandy Hook but that when it came to gun legislation, “any restrictions on our Second Amendment rights must be narrowly tailored and meet the strictest standard of scrutiny our judiciary can apply.”

Renacci spokesman Shawn Ryan noted that the NRA endorsed his opponent during a congressional race in 2010 but that the congressman’s views on the Second Amendment are the same now as then. “While Jim is proud to have earned the support of the NRA in 2012, his strong belief in the Second Amendment is clearly independent of the decisions made by the NRA,” Ryan said. “Jim’s lawmaking decisions are guided by the Constitution, his conscience and his constituents – not by special interest groups.”

GOPES LEARN NOTHING FROM 2012 LOSS

Expecting voters to know what is going on and relying on MSM to do so, and not confronting MSM’s blatant bias is just part of the reason for our 2012 great loss. While there are examples of fraud which may close up the gap. The gap is too big to blame the loss on fraud ...Expecting GOPES {Goverment Of the People Eite Snob(s)} to address media bias or Romney to call Obama a congenital liar or even point out that the fact and figures released by the White House were allways questionable is another. Let alone call him a “socialist”.is perhaps more than one could expect.. While that played a significant role that was not the major factor..

But the fault lies really in the messaging the Republican campaign came up with.

They violated the first principle, The basic mechanics of campaigning (without going into the sacrosanct”social issues “) which could be defended but are not gone into here using the standard dissmissive devices used by experienced campaign managers. Ignoring the “Bread and Butter Issues” which affect everyones pocketbook is the greatest violation when running a campaign..

Instead they choked on political correctness and tripped over past positions on global warming and Romneycare. Both of which were expanded into serious pocketbook issues created by the Obama regime and then mourned over by terming the “Republican” approach as lacking in “demographics” when the election post mortum was conducted.This was a phoney issue generated by opponents and driven by MSM. For these issues; energy and the AHCA Obamacare, which should have been confronting those regimes policies that reached into every “demographic” in the political play book .They are now paying the price . Applying the cliche “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory”.

Instead they allowed the opponent and the Mainlining Socialist Media which feeds the US main stream of communications both print and “optical” to set the agenda and they continue to do so...
One of the basics was to re-inforce what the tea partys set out to do in 2010. Defeat the AHCA known as Obamacare. If the Republicans articulated what was in that piece of legislation which we are now dealing with, there would never have been any second term.

Besides failing to hammer away on what will happen when Obama gets returned; The Obama past due 2013/14 Tax Increases. The impact of Obamas gagging energy resources (a socialist construct never branded as such) with policies requiring reliance on intermittent sources wind and solar and that resulted in massive failure and corruption (barely re-mentioned).,restricted use of drilling, and the effective banning use of coal for electrification , and the restrctions on fracking, with the resulting prices doubling or even trippling on everything and where a connection could be made to those on restricted incomes forcing a dependency of government never made.. This was a dream bread and butter issue for the GOP which reached into every ‘demographics’ pocketbook.

They could have even ridiculed accepting the Democrat definition of the hyphenated African-Hispanic -Americans . I personally don’t believe in hyphenated Americans. Our passports reads Americans. Not Afro-American, Asian-American, Hispanic-American, Gay-American, Honky-American, Rich -American,hyphenated marriage as in “gay/ opposite sex Marriage, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. . When I see an American who is black or an asian who happens to be of a different skin color that person is an American first and the skin color secondary. Much of that feeling was articluated in speech make by Reagan to CPAC in 1979.

Terms created by the democrat party who should, since they decided to remove any reference to God or The Creator at their 2012 convention remove any resemblance to the party of old .They should be considered hypenated. Hyphenated into Demo-Coms. Which every book thumping or simply devout God believing Christians,Jews and even Moslems should treat such as persons.spreading the asian flu o filled with leprosy..... With disgust !

Then there is the impact of Supreme Court Appointments.. 18,000 new IRS agents, or thousands of $20 per hour “Navigators” needed to explain Obamacare 62 pages of regulations and on and on. Let alone touch Benghazi and foreign policy even with a 10 foot pole but which was left to languish.

Lastly Then there is Obama’s personal extravagance and behavior refusing to visit Nashville after its disaster showing up at New Orleans after Mitt visited it. Even after the Christi thing if that was brought up it would have blunted the impact.

Romney, Rove, the RINOS and the GOPES could have loaded their cannons up with grape shot but decided instead to play games and throw darts..

What can be done ?

Any campaign theme should be based on this;

IT’S TIME TO GET THIS GOVERNMENT OUT

OUT OF OUR FACE AND OUR POCKET BOOK

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